


Die Entführung aus dem Schützenfest

by tvsn



Series: H+S [9]
Category: 18th Century CE RPF
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bants, Current Events, Day drinking, Deutsch | German, Disillusionment, Football, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Journalism, Lewd Humour, Male Friendship, Monkeys, Newspapers, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Politics, Porn Watching, Sport injury, Yellow Fever, laddish themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 11:26:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18872251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvsn/pseuds/tvsn
Summary: Eccentric sports-journalist George Hanger gets into a banal argument with his accountant and accidently ends up winning a historic shooting contest as a result, thus threatening to interrupt his tax-evasion scheme whilst earning him an enormous bar-tab at a public festival. Can this newly-crowned ‘king’ avoid financial ruin without sacrificing every member of his court?





	1. Der Verein

**Author's Note:**

> In short, either you already know what I’m about and what you are in for or you will shortly be severely disappointed (whilst learning more than you ever cared to know about military memoirs and modern sport. ;)
> 
> Full disclaimer? Though this piece is set in the ‘Hide and Seek’ universe, it is not a complex crime-comedy and you needn’t have read that tome to understand (and hopefully enjoy) this little side-work (which is set well after the fact and primarily focuses on minor characters as seen from a single perspective.) That said, if you are just skimming through the tags looking for a coffee-based romance, a modern road-trip with familiar tropes to serve the place of fun tourist-traps, or any other standard against which fan-works are rated (and let’s face it, who isn’t?) I’m _probably_ not your girl. In this parish we like to go hard on variety subjects such as porn-addicted primates, anti-vaxxers, German “fashion”, US gun laws, upscale grocers, tabloid institutions and Liverpool FC supporters. There is also a short episode in a brothel in this first chapter, nothing graphic, just thought I might make you aware. We good?
> 
> No? Damn. _O’rite_ , if you are here wondering what I am doing writing fluff when I’m otherwise mean to be penning the conclusion of a crime-novel, you are just going to have to forgive my smiles this week and my wish to share them in the form of something light-hearted. My twin brother got engaged last weekend ♥ and (secondarily, but still worth stating) the CL Finale is bound to be brilliant after two against-all-odds victories in the semis. You know what? This all deserves a toast and I’m well certain you do as well – go pour yourself something forty-proof, raise your glass and, well, happy reading! XOXO - Tav

The conversation was dull in itself but made for decent fodder in a first-person shooter. That, or something of life had elapsed George Hanger while on his sickbed, something more substantial than that which could be substituted easily enough with prescription opioids, antibiotics, and a stout with more marketing value than alcohol volume. Tuning his friends out for a moment as he contemplated the possible consequences of sharing the rest of his pint with his flat-mate’s pet monkey, he minimised the game and its live chat in want of Google, only to quickly find himself transfixed by a video of some species of primate that Spanish zoologists could not bribe into surrendering the controller to a television set that they had intended to use in a study of some academic merit until the cheeky chimp had made a discovery of his own.

Identifying himself in the animal, Hanger felt an odd-placed yearning for continental Europe, for its loose and fully liberated morals and the for the censor that only seemed to apply to matters of public debate; state-controlled media dubbing every opinion that veered from the centre ‘fascism’ or ‘socialism’ respectively and dismissing these things from the discussion without clearly defining these terms they used to evoke some lacklustre form of scorn. It had seemed to him rather quaint at the time, but as he continued to watch that which might be his literal spirt animal with delight, it dawned on him that it did not very much matter how ‘free’ speech was relative to the land across the Atlantic when pornography was shown during daytime television slots to fill the air. No one in the old-world had any need of the news or want of it for that matter: his former employer had spent the past several weeks filling space they might have better used discussing the coming election in the European Parliament with pictures of electric scooters as an ersatz debate Hanger did not personally think was worth its ink and very likely went altogether unread by the immediate audience. He would have likely thought nothing of it and nothing in a wider sense were there naked women in every newspaper kiosk competing for his attention.

Here, with his entertainment options limited, George Hanger felt he was affording himself far too much time to think.

He had five channels in Bermuda, all of them broadcasting assorted content of worldly (but of little personal) interest. Still, had had a laptop, which, by its very presence gave his wee primate no reasonable excuse not to expand its horizons in the same fashion their shared cousin clearly had. Though he had never entirely understood or bought into the infinite monkey theorem in mathematics, he imagined with considerable ease his pet typing “YouPorn” into a search window when not the Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

“Why don’t you do anything interesting?” he asked in a huff as he proceeded to pull up the tried and trusted site, guessing vaguely at the animal’s hidden fetishes and fancies as his eyes shopped the thumbnails and abbreviated descriptions for something that might be fun to try with the kind of friend one could make on the wrong side of town with a full wallet, something he would surely find himself again in procession of just as soon as he could conjure up enough motivation to finish the article he had been assigned.

“No?” he sighed to Marcon as he had taken to calling his pet, assuming it to be a Frenchmen from the sounds it made despite a seeming lack of excitement for anything that might equate to an easy (and possibly unfair) stereotype. Hanger closed the tab and returned to the Word document which he had set aside for want of the social interaction he had since forgotten he was engaging in.

>> _Against what standard do you seek to draw a comparison, George?_ << John Graves Simcoe snipped in a pitch only he could reach. Hanger looked about the living space he shared with a tug boat captain, a few coolers filled with the sea life brought in by the nets the man was not legally allowed to throw, a menagerie of exotic animals (half of them only there in hopes of being thrown a fish to eat or a crab to torment before they were taken to be sold on the black market in the twilight hours) and an equally large assortment of insects who belonged to the furnishings, same as the couch-bed, the coolers, and the television with its five channels of ‘general audience’ programming.

His friends, by stark contrast, all had wives and children or were close enough to these grim realities that Hanger did not feel it his place to draw distinctions where they themselves did not. They had office hours and stock portfolios, mortgage payments and gym memberships that they presumably did not neglected a few weeks after making a stated commitment in kind.

He wondered briefly if their lives contained any intrigue whatsoever that extended the basic perimeters of personality: Simcoe, who was quick to offence, was also keen on creating situations that invited it. Rawdon had recently proven himself the most capable of their lot, at least in terms of charisma, with a number of ‘Me Too’ claims made against his person having had little effect on his polling or public perception. Ferguson was probably involved in organised crime though he only ever spoke of his day-job in the blandest language, prompting no further questions and thus allowing him time for Twitter-based cultural satire and a selection of various other eyebrow raising side-projects that should have well gotten him killed by this point. Tarleton was immune to critique, which was likely a  good quality to processes when forced to make life and death decisions as a field officer far from home, but proved problematic in a post-military existence when asked to arrive at bipartisan solutions in a land tired of and angry at the democratic instrument that had brought them to Brexit.

Hanger, for his part, realised he had no particular reason to hold any of the lads who more or less were keeping him company in contempt, for before discovering that chimpanzees shared similar pastimes to himself and every man he knew, his day’s highlight had been the burger he had eaten at lunch an hour earlier for reasons of ‘research’.

"Sorry, I was talking to Marcon," he gave, not wanting to add injury to insult by confessing his investment in their conversation had so negligible he had all but forgotten it was occurring in his ear all the while. "My monkey. My flatmate's monkey," he corrected, adjusting upon the realisation that he had never actually seen man and beast together, "A monkey that happens to share my quarters, better said. I was trying to teach it how to watch porn."

>> _O'rite, the bar far exceeds our collective reach._ << Tarleton scolded whilst seeming to applaud.

>> _Petit crapaud!_ << Rawdon laughed upon exclaiming. Hanger joined in, not because he knew or understood the expression, but because he had always found that Brits sounded particularly pained in their pronouncing of the French language, regardless of how many years of tutorage they had been made the suffer at school. The same concept extended across the channel, as though the quality of sound was determined to stand testament to centuries of conflict. Perhaps entire political histories were to be found in how comfortably foreign words sat in their speaker’s mouth. Hanger wondered how Rawdon’s French was apprised in Paris, half-assuming that the French had their own version of Germany’s “ _Du sprichst aber gut Deutsch!_ ” – a causal insult on an English accent as it was on every other, the standard response to an answer of how long one had been living in _die Bundesrepublik_ , regardless if this figure dealt with days or decades; evidence and explanation for the recurring reality that the German peoples did not so much have friends as they had shared enemies from time to time.

All the same, as George Hanger looked about his small apartment with a window view of a Caribbean paradise, he missed hearing this lazy assessment, he missed the rudeness and the rain synonymous with his second home, he missed working at Bild Zeitung and he especially missed the naked women the tabloid used to print on the front page.

"No, no - that isn't how I meant it. My being bored doesn't make you lot boring,” he half-lied, adding honestly, “I am coming up with excuses towards procrastination.”

His avatar hat been shot and killed without him having noticed and as he shifted his view to the wider field, he saw that everyone else had since fallen as well, everyone except Tarleton, whose strength could be chalked up to beginner’s luck. He had only been playing for a few weeks upon finding the game in its app form on the phone he had confiscated from the daughter of his long-time mistress in a separate siege that Hanger was surprised the teen was sustaining herself against quite so well.

He wondered how much time had elapsed since everyone all of his friends had fallen, if every form of media had since become ‘social’ and if there was any benefit to this in the larger scheme of things.

The war, it seemed, was secondary.

They were all just plugged into it because the only other entertainment option was going out, barely feasible even with the best of incomes at the month’s end.

“I miss writing match summaries for tabloids,” Hanger admitted as he looked at the word count left to him to edit. He had made salary at a monthly magazine with glossy pages and the prestige and pretention this format entailed, but could not help but to feel that his talents were better spent serving the lowest common denominator. Unfortunately, he had fought with his former editor before leaving and had burnt every bridge he had built to Britain’s yellow press as well in the same tirade, leaving him with word counts in the thousands on topics broad rather than specific.

His latest assignment had taken him to the Bermudian Premier Division where he had spent nearly an entire season in physical and professional anguish, watching ten teams imitate sport rather than enjoy it. For an outsider accustom to covering the top leagues in Europe, Bermudian football was akin to attending a local charity drive with teens bubbling over with nervous excitement in the gymnasium they had transformed into a poor man’s ‘Monte Carlo’ for an evening in hopes of convincing their parents to part their pockets for some cause their teachers had decided was important. It was akin to community theatre, Shakespeare by armatures compensating that lack of experience with an excess of ‘acting’.

It was a parody.

But then, it was also a promised paycheque, and George was in sore need of funds after falling ill in a foreign port after spending a small fortune for the company of the fairer sex.

“Today I finally managed to eat a hamburger,” Hanger boasted. This was an accomplishment in itself, certainly, but one that served to mark an improving of his health rather than marking a professional milestone. “Flanagan's Onions,” he clarified, chiding. “There is a team in the division literally named after a menu item in a mock-Irish pub.”

>> _That is actually amazing_.<< Tarleton laughed.

“It was alright. Not worth eleven quid. Whatever I find I have to say about it shan’t be comparable to the quality content of the old ‘page-one girls’ either, but, you know, the burger – it was … _o’rite_ ,” he gave in a loose imitation of his best friend’s scouse, slightly perturbed that all the while Ban had been orally pretending to the airs of the landed gentry with their elongated, enunciated habits. It was disconcerting. Tarleton ordinarily only spoke that way in an attempt at political rhetoric or while picking out and picking up women. Perhaps he was instead attempting to offend.

In the silence that followed, Hanger questioned if he instead had.

“I know that world is lost,” he gave of the girls, “that sort of publication - Bild, Daily Mail, the like, appeals largely to the older, working-class segments of the population and women tend to out-live men, especially in the cases of those in manual labour professions. They don’t care for or about tits -”

>> _It is worse than you think._ << Ferguson told him bluntly. >> _In Britain_ ,<< he continued with some measure of blame, >> _one will soon be made to register when viewing porn online, an infringement not only on pleasure but on personal privacy._ <<  

Hanger frowned, not for the fact that thanks to legislation some bureaucrat might gain genuine insight into what he did when he was otherwise meant to be working, but because Patrick’s tone hinted at a lager conflict which George himself personally had no means of placing. In the months he had languished in sickness and sunlight, he had lost some of his connection to the circles in which his mates made their rounds and began to consider the sad, present possibility that they were only here to stay part of his. When one had been ill for as long as he now had, obvious overtures of care disappeared and he had been far too preoccupied with the beautiful but limited outlook from his living room window to truly be appreciative of the extended effort.

Tarleton was in Commons; Rawdon in Lords; Ferguson worked directly for the Hewletts whose ambitions were checked by these two men in significant government posts with opposing political agendas that stood as something of an open secret. Simcoe, stuck in an outpost in the Americas, was more or less employed by the democracy-denouncing businesswoman Elizabeth Gwillim, to whom Tarleton’s natural daughters’ trust funds were tied. Brexit was a powder house and any spark, Hanger considered, might result in an explosion.

His friends were either still logged in out of care for him, or alternatively, they were hoping to restart the session in hopes of symbolically blowing one another to bits. Hanger wondered which was more likely and which would be worse. Then, remembering his rediscovered romantic notion of free, public access pornography, decided that he was not interested in the news in itself and nor should his mates be. Given their shared past, he felt he had every reason to hold them to his own higher convictions.

Maybe he had developed at some point in his extended delirium a version of his friends who, like himself, were just as excited to attend the feast as they were the fight. Maybe this hard truly been the case and maybe it was still. Maybe nothing appeared as it was through a looking glass. And maybe he was himself enriched by this view.

Hanger pulled up a travel site to see what it would cost him to exit the Garden of Eden – the cheaper flights, the ones his employer would sponsor, all directed him through Brussels on a return to England which simply would not do. He could get to his flat in Hannover through Frankfurt inexpensively enough, and decided this might be his best option until FourFourTwo decided where to send him next. In the meantime, the mindless chatter opened up another option for a quick payday. Opening another document and phrasing everything as ‘a source close to’, he began to transcribe.

>> _Birth-rates are down, severely in certain segments of the population_ ,<< Tarleton sought to clarify. >> _We know from sociology that the higher moral standards are culturally set, the more the population affected openly seeks opportunities for deviant behaviour._ << In his voice, Hanger heard the man’s father in tone, tactic and intent. Though he had never met him, George had a sizable respect of the former Lord Mayor of Liverpool as he tended to hold anyone capable of forcing their own, unrelated agenda through by talking absolute and unashamed bullshit in debates around altogether separate public policy issues. Ban might have done well in the local politics he had intended to enter after a storied military career and sordid academic one left few other options open.

In parliament, however, Hanger couldn’t help but to feel the man was punching above his weight and rewording this analogy to something the online audience of his periodical might better appreciate ( _‘Lessons Sir Banastre might have learned from Moyes’ spell at Man United’_ ), he filled the eight-hundred word requirement, reasonably satisfied that his mate was too busy tormenting the children whose public-school tuition he paid over their involvement in ‘Fridays for Future’ to read an opinion piece on a football-site pretending to be news. Since the absence of electronics, electricity, private cars, warm meals and showers were not enough to get the girls living in his London home to admit that their only interest in this movement was to avoid sitting a maths test, Tarleton’s sadism ostentatiously designed at helping them ‘reach their goals’ was beginning to require extended research into small ways one might reduce his or her carbon footprint. He had even begun talking about it, which, Hanger secret reasoned, was probably little Marie’s goal.

Perhaps this next generation would produce someone worthy of the ruling class.

His own, Hanger thought as he continued to listen, was fully lost to any promise or potential.

>> _Every example that you could possibly come on to support that argument ignores the comparative availability of contraception._ << Ferguson dismissed.

>> _Of course, none of this would be a problem if you held another referendum_ ,<< Simcoe added.

>> _Even if I am to take it that you share in dear Elizabeth’s opinion of democracy, do you really think there would be any gains to falling into the trap of tyranny? Rescheduling a vote because the last result feels a bit inconvenient?_ << Rawdon challenged.

>> _Isn’t that exactly what they plan to do in Scotland and Northern Ireland?_ << Simcoe rebuked.

With such matters, Hanger mused, even where his friends were of one mind, their reasoning was so varied that they could hardly be said to agree.

Suddenly covering non-news abroad no longer felt a strain on his general constitution.

Happy with his quick eighty-quid, he pulled up a video on the porn site he as of yet was not being required to register for, put it on the television and waited to see if his monkey would so amuse itself.

A few minutes later, unsatisfied with his scientific findings, he pleaded, “Can we get back to this porn thing?” He simply needed more beer if he was to hear another Brexit debate or discussion, which, as an unprecedented situation with no clear out and no real answers, always took the tone of wondering aloud at a pub after hours over the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, regardless of position. “I am concerned that I’ve somehow created the circumstance that make my primate nervous to explore his sexual urges in the way you suggest,” he gave, wondering when exactly he had last brought a young woman back to his flat.

>> _I can but guarantee you that is the case._ << Tarleton told him. >> _Went and looked at the onion-burger you posted on Instagram, the picture of you getting ready to eat it. I’m … George, I’m concerned. I would hazard to say we all are_.<<

>> _Jesus, fuck me, that is a strong look._ << Rawdon gave, making a strange nasal-noise all the while that suggested suppressed laughter or an English attempt at the French language.

“I’ve been ill,” Hanger, who had never been particularly photogenic to begin with, defended. “I tried to fix my tint by putting everything in sepia but to no avail.”

His skin, thin in an idiomatic sense, was still slightly yellow on account of his fever. Feeling that his friends were implying that he could thus not get a girl in a drive by, he looked again at his long-form, realising he would need to use some of the income he anticipated from it to host an orgy in his Hannover quarters so soon as he returned, simply to prove a point that should not need making for it was not as though he imagined them being any better off: Simcoe was actually committed to the idea of a committed relationship – to the point of having a number of screaming toddlers, who, proof though they were of his sex life also stood as an indication that the act could not have been much fun anymore for either himself or his good wife. Rawdon had political reason to be discreet about his affairs, if there were any, and probably paid more than the deed was worth for some woman’s silence. Tarleton, in contrast, had reason to seek out the ‘bad’ press but was both sad and stupid in his pursuits – the ingénues that held his interest only humoured him because they liked to liken themselves to Mary Robinson, and, even being aware of this to the point he freely admitted as much, he still spent thousand in cocktails prior to a few minutes of entertainment he might have gotten for free in the ladies’ lavatory of the upscale establishments he favoured. Ferguson, who was the most technologically savvy of their lot, did well for himself on Tinder and might have done better still if he did not make plans for a second date, inevitably leading to the typical costs associated with an extended affair, however ‘open’ and ‘casual’ both parties prefaced it as being.

For what they spent on women, they could easily fill their stately homes with sex-workers for a long weekend. The fact that they did not, and, on top of this, felt justified in their picking on his present appearance as though he could not, was enough to bring Hanger to anger.

Then, Ferguson offered a clarification that proved the point the others had been trying to make. >> _It is the socks and sandals, mate, you look like a German tourist in the worst of all ways._ <<

“Klieder machen Leute,” Hanger, who had long prided himself on his flash wardrobe, mumbled to himself as he glanced to his feet, seeing his sin for what it was.

>> _I think they call that ‘integration’. It is a European initiative_.<<

>> _I guess we finally know your opinion on Brexit._ <<

>> _Sehr Deutsch._ <<

He booked his return flight immediately, disgusted at himself for standing out in such common fashion. The novelty had worn off. He was ready for something new.

 

* * *

 

Two weeks later, haggard from his flight and peeved from an almost out-of-place airport experience, George Hanger found that the general restlessness he had built up over the course of several months in Bermuda had pursued him back to Germany, to the dust-filled flat he kept for fear of rent-increases, which, after a few minutes of marvelling at the off-white filth that had built up over the course of his absence, he was already eager to leave. Arrangements to this end had been made a few days this prior to his departure, though, what he might do with the primate during a short stint in Britain would need to be worked out.

He watched the monkey that had been a last minute, ill-thought out addition to his luggage as it ran about, confused and likely cold.

Hanger debated if he should go to the shops before they closed, buy one of those creepy porcelain dolls that he had nearly forgotten elderly widows in this country kept in their windows to scare away company in hopes that the clothes it wore would fit his little friend, or if he was instead better served by the vain idea that Marcon’s tail, plumed by fright and chill, would do the job of dusting.

No, he decided. He needed to call a housekeeper and he needed to go back into town for a few provisional items he had either forgotten at the grocers or neglected in his anger and haste.

What did monkeys eat, the reporter wondered, never having discovered if it was alright to give it beer or not, never having seen it with a banana.

In the end he decided (without consulting a search engine for he was not eager to set up the WiFi) that ‘Bananen-Weizen’ would likely be the most entertaining option, and if it ended up making Petit Marcon ill, he still had antibiotics and prescription opioids on hand that by this point were seeming more and more a recreational option.

The small primate, however, took well to the beer-and-banana-nectar concoction he returned with, caution aside, fit nicely into its little dress and bonnet and happily ate the lettuce that fell from George’s traditional German Döner (something he had decided on underway, not from a particular hunger for a kebab but for the fact that he had become annoyed at British and American tourists for speaking to him in English and felt the most practical place to reacquaint himself with the German language was a Turkish Imbiss. This was called ‘ _Integration_ ’ and it was a ‘stated objective’ of Berlin and Brussels.)

He was still tired of his mother tongue later that evening after unpacking and logging into the game upon the realisation that he was in a different time zone and therefore had not missed this hour or so of structured neglect, and though a half an hour of being stalked through the inner city by his countrymen as they demanded translations and travel tips would otherwise have been enough to make any man but him especially wont to break ties to the Crown altogether and find his fortune somewhere off the standard itinerary, he was proud of the progress he had made with his pet and wanted to tell his friends.

In return, all he got were questions of how he managed to bring the primate into the EU, to which he answered that he was not challenged on his claims that it was a cat, and that the customs agent was more concerned that he had a prescription for the drugs in his carry-on. He was curious to see if the same tactic might work in the UK but having heard enough narratives to instruct him ‘no’ decided it was not worth the risk.

Then, there were other, better ways of ‘monkeying around’ in the motherland.

“I’m actually headed out to Liverpool middle of next week,” Hanger led, “if you’re keen, we can -”

>> _No_ ,<< Tarleton interrupted to his surprise. >> _Not having it. Liverpool fans are the worst in all of the British Isles, when not Europe, when not the world. Hard enough to inoculate myself in London from their aspirate jubilation._ <<

“I don’t know, mate – ever been to Gladbach?” Hanger countered, snickering to himself over his friend’s clear anguish.

>> _The Superclasico_ ,<< Rawdon said flatly.

Tarleton cleared his throat. >> _The difference being that when Gladbach loses, one expects a full radio silence from their fans for a solid week at least. It evens out. When Boca and River meet, there is a decent chance of finding oneself in hospital, hopefully with enough of a concussion to forget the fixture and the fighting on the street to surround it. Liverpool beat Barcelona this Tuesday past four-nil and even when my wife’s not singing about it, she is smiling – smiling with a fever and fervour that it is beginning to occur to me fails our marriage otherwise – she doesn’t even look at me that way when we are both naked and-_ <<

>> _You ever try going down on her?_ << Simcoe piped in. It occurred to Hanger that among this group he was singular in not having slept with this she-wolf, and he wondered briefly to himself if the former noblewoman, in turn, had ever herself bedded any of his mates with intent, of if (more likely) in her head she had been with Wijnaldum, Origi, Shaqiri, and Alexander-Arnold respectively.

He considered the repercussions of raising this questioning, wondering if his friends would argue over the clear and present conflict of interest or if they would debate who-was-who in last night’s line up, or if they would try to remember past starting elevens between themselves from when these nights of passion had occurred. He smiled to himself, reasonably satisfied that everyone else on the conference call had been Stevie G at some point and was reasonably happy not to himself share this distinction.

>> _She comes home and gives me this look and I consider my options_ ,<< Tarleton continued, >> _any form of greeting would only lead to a reminder that the Reds are in another bloody Champions League Finale, so I just up and left, went to my club, ordered myself a drink, intending to join in the scatterings of small talk when I came up on two colleagues whom I otherwise esteem in the midst of praising Klopp’s side, over-assessing their odds at taking home a bit of silverware this season after all._

>> _I readied myself for argument, but reasoned against such  for the same reasons I never get into it with derelict preachers standing atop fish-buckets down in the tube as they prophesise the End Times, the difference here being fire and brimstone is a far more pleasant version of the approaching apocalypse than Liverpool lifting a trophy – my God! We would never hear the end of it!_

>> _I finished my whiskey in a single shot, nearly choking on the ice as I hastened to escape before anyone had it in their mind to drag me into any of it. I went to a brothel, found some company and reasonably satisfied that of the maybe fifty words the girl knew in our language, it wouldn’t occur to her to string ‘you’ll never walk alone’ together in a sentence,_ << he mimicked in a non-descript Slavic accent, >> _I followed her up to her room,_ << he sighed, >> _Red sheets, lads, red wall, red_ \- <<

“Light District, ay?” Hanger laughed, “they always get you somehow.”

>> _Very Fifty-Shades_.<< Ferguson observed. >> _I don’t go out for football. Can’t do it, could go for a tie up though - you might read the books next time you have a layover_. << he suggested.

“If they book you through Lufthansa you might finish the whole series,” Hanger complained of his own recent experiences.

>> _Nae,_ << Tarleton answered. >> _I’ve seen the films and liked series and subject far better when it was set in Belfast and people actually died_.<<

>> _Strange way to be type-cast_.<< Rawdon remarked.

>> _I’d take it_.<< Tarleton claimed, >> _Ordinarily at least. Since I already paid downstairs, I let her blindfold me and got on with it, but I went home with this sort of empty feeling … I can’t explain it otherwise. Walked in to find Marie and Susan chattering away, scolded them for being up at this hour and sent them to bed, but not before being handed the hand-written assignment I’d asked for outlining a proposal for a sustainable future – eighty pages – front and back_. _The little shite … clearly echoing her mum by way of unconcealed spite._ <<

>> _You give Marie her phone back then?_ << Simcoe wondered.

>> _I will when I’m convinced that she has earned it_. << he lied. >> _No, I started reading, pulled out a pen to correct a few spelling errors and, around five pages in, seeing more … well, ‘red’ than I’d have liked to on any occasion decided it might do my nerves a bit better to see it portrayed in blood, logged in here only to find that George got himself an interview assignment in my city, which_ ,<< he shifted, >> _much as I miss you mate, is the last place I want to be right now. I’m thinking of taking an extended holiday, at least until the final – say, when are you back in Bermuda?_ <<

“That job is finished,” Hanger answered, suggesting, “You could join me in Germany – before you object on the grounds of ‘Klopptimisim’ I’ll inform you that we’re in the midst of the Eisheilige, no one in the whole of this country is smiling or will be for weeks, a few hours in and I myself have forgotten what the sun looks like.” There was no need to mention the English tourists who had taken to ‘his’ town. A single, or even a shattering, of Liverpool supporters who quite liked to sing while they were winning was not comparable by any stretch to the way things might well have been in Merseyside, Tarleton’s natural inclinations towards exaggeration aside.

>> _I didn’t understand a single word you just said._ << Ferguson sighed.

Hanger blinked, trying to recall what precisely he had just said, if he had said it in German without intending to, and realised that the confusion might well have been entirely cultural. “In central Europe in mid-May we are victim to a cold front and owing itself to the old Roman Catholic calendar where the days were all named for holy martyrs, this time is known as the ‘Eisheilige’ or, in English, ‘Ice Saints’,” he explained. “‘Klopptimisim’ is just top-quality punning.”

>> _Of what?_ << Ferguson scoffed.

>> _It is decided, I’m off to Edinburgh_.<< Tarleton said with some measure of mirth.

>> _Edmund Hewlett is a Liverpool supporter_.<< Simcoe warned lightly of his sometimes-friend. The scouse that followed this comment did not lend itself to translation, suffice it to say that Tarleton was reasonably upset and Rawdon thought to exploit this second sudden shift for his own political agenda.

>> _I’d happily extend you Spain on a more permanent basis. I guarantee no one in Catalonia is singing_.<< he said.

>> _The post is in Madrid where both the Wanda Metropolitano and Palacio de la Zarzuela happen to be located. What if the reds don’t fall flat in the final the way they always do? What if Felipe extends another invitation that I can neither except nor refuse?_ << Tarleton complained. Hanger waited, wondering if Rawdon would be blatant about his plan to the only man in the unit who seemed to miss its finer points. >> _And then there is the very real threat of a run in with Wellesley when he is on one of his blacker-moods, no, can’t do it. I fear I haven’t the constitution for any of it at this time_.<<

>> _Wellesley?_ << Rawdon inquired.

>> _How have I not told you about this, moreover, how are you unaware?_ << Tarleton demanded with a tad too much enthusiasm for the particulars. >> _The half-mythical Kitty Pakenham made things Facebook-official with some bloke called Lowry Cole and little Atty’s just not having it._ <<

>> _I think the question here is why you are following a bunch of kids on social media_.<< Ferguson observed dryly.

>> _Mine left her app open, didn’t she? I can see all of the goings-on. Kind of been up in it myself, you see, Wellesley has the audacity to blame Marie for the original split and -_ <<

“You are never giving that phone back, are you?” Hanger laughed. His friend had lost half of his right hand during his time in service, the injury slightly proceeding the advent of touch-screen smart-phones becoming a market-standard. Tarleton had been using a Blackberry for more than a decade, afraid of a change his impairment might actually hinder. For his part, Hanger had never had any doubt that when confronted with a reason to meet what he perceived as a challenge, the colonel would rise to it in high fashion. He had had the device for scarcely a month and likely already wanted an upgrade.

>> _Nae, I’m addicted now, I am._ << Tarleton admitted. >> _My sister used to always show me by way of occupying her right hand with a cigarette that it is perfectly possible to type on a touch screen with two fingers … maybe I just hadn’t opportunity and motive before. Any road, where you at, George? Hannover? I’ll book a flight, hang out with you for a few days and trade keys when you have to go out to Anfield or wherever you are being sent_ -<<

“You are free to seek sanctuary in my flat but hard pass on Toxteth, FourFourTwo sponsors me food and logging.”

>> _How can you complain about a gig like that?_ << Simcoe chided.

>> _He has to go to Anfield._ << Tarleton defended.

“Well it is better than here,” Hanger gave, suddenly annoyed with himself that by offering to open his doors, he had committed himself to dusting, sweeping, and other such chores that did not suit his fancy. The kinds of maids whose numbers he had kept did not perform the function their costumes might suggest, and he hesitated from hiring someone at a (far more reasonable) hourly rate without knowing how workmen’s insurance regulated itself in that industry. Theoretically, given his recent bout with illness, he could call upon his own heath care company to arrange something for him, but was it wise to invite the knowledge that he lived in squalor with a small primate whom he had dressed up as a milk-maiden? One could easily come to the wrong conclusions about his moral character.

>> _What has happened?_ << Rawdon asked with something approaching concern.

>> _The cold weather is making that white-sock and sandal combination impossible for him_.<< Ferguson answered to riotous laughter.

“Fuck you all,” Hanger spat.

>> _Uh-oh_.<<

“No I … after I landed after a long flight, I went through the Edeka they have here at the terminal,” he paused, explaining before he could be asked, “it is a grocery chain, like Germany’s answer to Waitrose -”

>> _Yet they have one in an airport?_ << Simcoe smarted.

“Efficiency,” Hanger dismissed, “Anyway, not that any of you nobs have a care for me or my health one way or another but I’ve not been able to hold down much more than a pint for the past few months -”

>> _How is that different from your standard?_ << Tarleton smiled.

“I lost fifty pounds, mate. You can see that in the picture. And here you all were, more worried about what was on my feet -”

>> _A travesty._ <<

“T’was! From the whole lot of you -”

>> _Wait, I know this word,_ << Simcoe tried, >>“ _Männerschnupfen.”_ <<

“No, John – that is you in every respect,” Hanger returned. “I had yellow fever -”

>> _Sorry, you were drinking with an illness that damages the liver?_ << Ferguson asked, more perplexed than challenging.

“Getting the full value out of it before its warranty expires, ‘innt?” Hanger defended all the same.

>> _It is fucking stupid however you seek to dress it up,_ << the Scotsman returned.

>> _This is why vaccination ought to be mandated,_ << Simcoe seemed to scold – who, it was not clear.

“I was as a child,” Hanger objected. “Ill thereafter as well as I recall, fat lot of good it did me in the long run as recent circumstance has shown -”

>> _Has to be renewed every ten years though_ ,<< Tarleton said.

“Sure if you are being deployed somewhere where literally anything you are due to encounter can kill. I contracted mine in America where the WHO doesn’t warn against -”

>> _Ah, they don’t have herd immunity for shit anymore thanks to an unwarranted fear of autism and the religious fanaticism that exists in certain pockets – New York! New York!_ << Tarleton decaled with an equal amount of ire and amusement. >> _They’ve declared a state of emergency in Rockland County as some portion of the Orthodox Jewish community has decided that the MMR vaccine isn’t kosher_ -<<

“Well, don’t tell John that, we all know how he gets,” Hanger brushed him off before this could become the kind of casual bigotry that masqueraded itself as public concern before and during its demand for blood.

>> _Same as yourself, then?_ << Simcoe squeaked in offence.

>> _Worse off, I’d say, because you’d be taking ibuprofen for it rather than an IPA, John_.<< Rawdon laughed.

“It was stout,” Hanger clarified, “and I hate to disappoint, Francis, but Americans take Tylenol with and for everything. John is probably hiding a flask of the stuff under his desk for an emergency such as a public bathroom being out of hand sanitiser. Which he also has in his coat pocket, but better safe than sorry,” he mocked.

>> _All of this is true,_ << Simcoe confirmed.

>> _Odd, taking such preventative measures, given America’s perchance for presentism in every other possible respect_ , << Tarleton seemed to ponder.

“That is some beautiful alliteration,” Hanger snorted.

It was not meant as a compliment, but Tarleton took it for one all the same.>> _Good, yes, please inform my publisher and Roderick M'Kenzie of this high-praise -_ <<

“I’ll sort your feud once I’ve answered my own,” Hanger assured him, frowning to himself. He had yet to read the critique, but if language based, this might in part be his fight as well.

Banastre Tarleton’s long-time mistress (and probable ghost writer) Mary Robinson processed an extensive vocabulary but avoided synonyms as though this belonged to a hidden but deeply held superstition. In poetry and political rhetoric, such could prove a strength but when it came to prose in any form, be it her own fiction or the memoir she likely suspected of being Ban's, the repetition was more than the soul could sensibly bare _. Sensibly!_ , Hanger grimaced as her reflected on Robinson's latest and last literary effort, wondering if she had the _sense_ to ask the eyes of an editor at all. Luckily for his sales, supporters and even for his critics, Tarleton had consulted at least two. Hanger, for his part, had been supplementing his lifestyle for the past few months from reading an informative but altogether self-aggrandising history and offering a handful of tips in hopes of making it read a bit less like Clinton’s ‘What Happened’. If he had been successful, he did not know. He had never picked up the advance copy he had been sent.

>> _And that being?_ << the former colonel asked.

“If you would allow me to finish -” Hanger trailed off, half-hoping this ultimatum would end the discussion. He had scarcely been back in Europe for half a day and he had already been forced to defend his honour as a gentleman against a man whom he considered a fool. Against his friends, who were demonstratively worse in this respect, he had his doubts as to how he might fare.

>> _Sorry for having a bit of fun with your fever and footwear_ ,<< Rawdon offered, almost sincerely.

>> _Männerschnupfen,_ << Simcoe coughed, before actually coughing and likely going into a mental spiral of hypocrisy and hypochondria.

“No its this Meijer chap I ran into shortly after landing. He was a friend … once. We got into a dual when I was still an active member of the verein over something so trivial that I had all but forgotten of its happening, until I, otherwise annoyed that I couldn’t find that schnitzel one can cook in a toaster over and having forgotten the name for it, waved and went to ask him – he is a Marktleiter now – I might clarify for context,” Hanger, still peeved at the interaction, stubbled his way through explanation.

>> _You might clarify a fair few words for ‘context’ if you might be so troubled_ ,<< Ferguson broke in. >> _You are doing that thing again where you mistake German for English and us for worldly._ <<

“You guys?” Hanger laughed, “Never! No, a ‘verein’ is club and the lad manages a super market. Sorry.”

>> _I actually knew the first: what do you call three Germans at a table together?_ << Simcoe asked, answering, _> > A verein!_<<

“Did you read that on a popsicle stick?” Hanger wondered.

>>No, Effie had private tutorage in the language since she was about five and her humour is still in a state of arrested development.<<

Humour and height, George thought.

>> _I have a German joke for you, rather, a joke about a German_ ,<< Tarleton announced.  >> _Mutti goes to Paris, gets off the plane, through to customs and hands her passport over for control. “Name?” she is asked. “Angela Merkel.” Occupation?” “No, just visiting for a few days.”_ <<

“Okay Ban, I’ve one you in particular will really appreciate,” Hanger countered, happy for the change of subject. “A Russian, A Pole and a Turk are all in a car together. Who is driving?”

>> _The Pole?_ << Tarleton guessed.

“The Polizei!” Hanger corrected his friend before quickly correcting himself with the English, “Police.”

>> _Ay!_ <<

“I’m almost killed the punchline there,” he admitted, caught slightly off-guard when he noticed his linguistic deficiencies for himself.

>> _But what happened with the schnitzel?_ << Rawdon asked.

“Nothing. Never found it. Ended up eating a kabab from a shop later on. When I asked I was … informed that the local,” he stopped, trying to phrase ‘Schützenfest’ in a language with no cultural equivalent, “’ _shooting festival’_ was this weekend and was thusly challenged to a dual as it were. I had no choice but to accept the challenge as honour demands – by Christ, if I can’t think of a thousand better ways to spend a weekend.”

>> _What -_ <<

“The festival? It is like the local championship in shooting,” Hanger explained quickly, “a laurelled historical tradition in which the winner is afforded the privilege of buying everyone in his club a pint, and these clubs have hundreds of members, mind, and  - to reimburse some of the costs - the winner is exempt from local taxes for two years until the next one happens and a new champion is crowned.

“Before you guys get excited, the guns are nothing like what you know from boarding school or boot camp, you shoot with replica weapons from two, three hundred years back and dress in kind – unfortunately with more historical accuracy, if you will, than you’re likely to see from Hollywood or the BBC, and anyone who hits the target likely does so by mistake or pure dumb luck if one is being generous.”

>> _Like a flintlock musket? No, take him up on it,_ << Ferguson insisted almost dismissively, >> _I’m in, I’d be brilliant at that._ << Hanger consider this claim for roughly half a second. Patrick Ferguson had a wide range of interests and talents that he actively cultivated, gun making and modification among them. He very likely would have proven himself useful in a scenario that called upon this highly specific kind of knowledge, were it not for the fact that his other main area of ‘leisurely’ interest put a certain strain on his more cultured pursuits.

“With your arm still in a cast from rugby, regardless of other experience, I’d say you’d be no more equipped than any man partaking in the shoot.”

>> _And that is_ _this_ _weekend?_ << Simcoe sought to clarify. >> _I’m in as well._ <<

“I don’t want to win this contest,” Hanger told them flatly.

>> _I don’t want to stay here and chance measles_ ,<< Simcoe responded.

>> _You think John more equipped to shoot a sitting target than I?_ << Ferguson responded to a statement Hanger had intended to be all-encompassing.

>> _It is harder than it sounds_.<< Tarleton teased.

“Ban,” Hanger warned before his friend, still sour at his home town’s ‘other’ team finding success and no doubt truly desperate the leave England, could extend himself an invitation, “You are welcome to my guest room as long as you wish. You are _not_ coming to the festival.”

>> _Because of what I said about quote-unquote Historical Williamsburg?_ << Tarleton whined. >> _My issue was, well two-fold, but where it is conversationally relevant: the Americans built this amusement park for little school children where they can shoot muskets on a class trip, in a public place, as part of their general education. What the fuck is wrong with them?  It is gross, it_ -<<

>> _Wouldn’t you_ prefer _that the continentals all simply shot each other, allowing England to reinstate its colonial claims two-hundred odd years after the fact though Baby Sussex?_ << Rawdon smarted him.

>> _That is fanciful_.<< Tarleton smiled. _> > I’ll have it, sure, why not? Better than them all dying of fucking measles - more humane, if you stop to consider it_.<<

“No. That is not my concern, you have to be part of a club to even get near the weapons or the shooting area,” Hanger tried to explain without affording the same kind of undue offence his footwear had suffered, “the public part, it is like any other German festival in every respect -”

>> _You mean the hats?_ << Ferguson tried his best not to laugh. Simcoe, Rawdon, and Hanger himself had considerably less success in this feat.

>> _I’ll bring my own, thanks_.<< Tarleton snipped. By irony and insult, Ban was widely regarded as ‘fashionable’ which merely meant that he made a conscious attempt to distract from his absence of stature with accessories that caused everyone in his vicinity some measure of second-hand embarrassment. Hanger took a sizeable measure of comfort when he considered what the real matter of critique his friend found in his German style of holiday shoe very likely was: envy. Tarleton could not wear anything without a heel, which of course he tried to hide.

>> _So is this sorted, are we all flying into Hannover to try our hands at the kinds of guns defeated with pikes and pitchforks?_ << Rawdon asked when he had regained himself from his laughter.

“No.”

>> _Seems so._ <<

>> _Provided the weather holds_.<<

“I’m picking you up in my socks and sandals regardless,” Hanger warned, assured in his own choices and the fact that these were his alone to make. Rawdon and Simcoe both had wives to pick out their outfits and Ferguson seemed to select from the top of his laundry pile. None of them had any idea of that which they spoke.

>> _Ban will be wearing some taxidermy totem pole so you will be in good company_ ,<< Rawdon sought to assure.

>> _It is hygienic, the wearing of socks, when you have a think on it,_ << Simcoe seemed to genuinely consider, >> _the sweat not getting through to the Birkenstocks to stink and stain them._ <<

Hanger nodded, agreeing with this logic because it supported him, though he had never worked it out before for himself. “Well, someone gets it,” he sought to applaud. “I’m calling it a night, gents. If you truly mean to make good on your threats, it seems I need to spend the next day or so in edits and revision as I’ll otherwise not make my Tuesday deadline.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache** :  
> The title of this work is a play on **Mozart** ’s 1782 comedic opera. Hanger, who sings “Vivat Bacchus” from the opera in a chapter of the large world of which this is part, himself wrote a poem titled “Ode to Bacchus.”  
> While at Göttingen, Hanger complained that he was too often addressed in English and thus ended up moving to Kassel for two years **where tourists were less of an annoyance.** He was historically mocked for his German clothing.  
>  **"Du sprichst aber gut Deutsch!"** ("But you speak German well!") - Don't. Seriously.  
>  **Integration** is a buzzword. It has no meaning, or maybe it does, but in Germany it is used more in the place of punctuation.  
>  **Männerschnupfen** is how men react to a light cold with heavy dramatics.   
> Fun fact! Turkish **Döner** was invented in Köln.  
> The **sex on TV** in the EU is more graphic than in the US, but it is also not for shock value, so, not to disappoint, but it kind of evens out.  
>  **This week in …:**  
>  I don’t have space to sum up the recent news the way I like, but here are a few themes you might want to throw a google on: Brexit deadline; Pew Research study - school-shootings; Rockland County, NY - measles outbreak; Baby Sussex; LFC v FCB; Edeka; E-scooters - Germany  
>  **Sport:**  
>  **Wijnaldum, Origi, Shaqiri, and Alexander-Arnold** were all instrumental in LFC's Tuesday night victory. **You'll Never Walk Alone** is the club's anthem. **Steven Gerrard** was its long serving captain, he currently coaches Glasgow Ranges.  
> The **Superclasico** is a derby between Argentinean sides Boca and River and the violence gets so bad that the fixture was recently held abroad (which didn't actually help matters.) On the hunch that S. Am. footy just isn't your jam, let me artificially construct a point of reference: you know the big battel scene in every period drama you have ever watched? Okay. Take that image, add an extra layer of Hollywood production value (random explosions and the like) and dress everyone in a replica jersey. That is a Superclasico.  
>  **Borussia Mönchengladbach** fans are actually kind of the best. They will remind you when they win but they don't talk at all when they lose for at least two days after the fact.  
> All of the club names in the Bermudan Premier Division are amazingly weird, **Flannigan’s Onions** is my personal favourite for the stem is just as strange as its flower.  
> Then-Everton trainer **David Moyes** was Sir Alex’s handpicked successor to the Man Utd job. He lasted 10 months.  
>  **Film and Television:**  
>  The actor Jamie Dornan starred in both **Fifty Shades** and **The Fall** , in both cases as a man getting his jollies though bondage. Consent makes a bloody huge difference in how these narratives play out. Use a safe word, kids.  
>  **Literature:**  
>  Tarleton's **Campaigns of 1780 and 1781 […]** , Robinson’s **The False Friend** , Mackenzie’s **Strictures […]** and naturally Hanger's … **entire library** are all referenced in and serve as source material for this work. They are also all available for FREE on Google book and, get this, there is even a German edition of 'Opinions' that I was mega excited to find this week. One small problem - it is in the _alte Schrift_ but I can claim all of three talents and reading calligraphy without issue is one of them. Should I take the time to transcribe this version into modern print that it is more accessible to German speakers? LMK.  
>  **History:**  
>  I can't possibly list all of the references, but a quick rundown of those that are plot significant:  
> Stricken with yellow fever and sent to Bermuda, Hanger nursed himself back to health on a steady diet of **opium and port**. He writes about finding a **monkey** in a baggage train and assuming it to be a Frenchman.  
>  **Ferguson** was hella dead by this point if we were purely following history. I did King's Mountain as a rugby match in H+S … he fared about as well.  
>  **Tarleton** narrowly lost a local election upon returning from the war only to win a seat in Westminster in a landslide like a month later. He then got sued because one of his creditors found his name on the ballot, which I’m only mentioning because it is nice to know that debt evasion has always found its place in politics.  
>  **Rawdon** 's decent reputation is probably deserved by and large, but he straight committed an act of rape as a young man and wrote about the incident jokingly. #timesup  
> I could have stuck this in the Turn tag but thought it more fun to incorporate historical **Simcoe** 's hypochondriasis.


	2. Die Zigeunerin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ferguson fills Hanger in on all that he has missed, lightly accusing him of being too self-centered to care or notice. Then they have a piss and real shots get fired to instantaneous regret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kay, kay – so there is this tag-specific trope that I have never myself participated in involving opening a chapter with a line of verse, but, oh friends, it is time:
> 
> „Ob Bundesliga im Pokal oder Champions League  
> ja gibt es denn was schöneres, als einen Bayern Sieg?  
> Hier ist Leben, hier ist Liebe, hier ist Feuer  
> und drum bleibt mein München, Deutschlands bester,  
> bis in alle Ewigkeit.  
> FC Bayern, Stern des Südens, du wirst niemals untergehen,  
> weil wir in guten wie in schlechten Zeiten zu einander stehen.  
> FC Bayern Deutscher Meister ja so heißt er, mein Verein,  
> ja so war es und so ist es und so wird es immer sein.“  
> („Stern des Südens“ – Willy Astor, 2008) 
> 
> That actually has nothing to do with this chapter, but then something like a Shakespearian sonnet would have been more of a reach. You don’t need a translation – it is an obnoxious football anthem about a team most of the nation can’t stand to see win doing just that – which they bloody well did this afternoon to the tune of 5-1 (!!!) 
> 
> Anyway, if you need something to do that isn’t football, here’s a chapter with rugby and flintlock rifles. Viel Spaß!

“Are you still on your first pint?” Banastre Tarleton snorted, clearly ready to abandon this stand for the next. Ordinarily, George Hanger would have echoed his mate’s constant wish for a forward march but the night before had left his head spinning.

“Second,” Patrick Ferguson corrected, unperturbed from what was likely intended as a slight. Tarleton rolled his eyes and roared over the twenty or so other patrons gathered haphazardly around the beer wagon, “Anuvver scewp! Fo jug!” which Hanger, catching the eye of the already over-worked wrench translated to, “Wir hatten gerne noch vier Biere – nein, besser drei, und außerdem eine Cola, bitte,” after first putting the text into what was likely meant in the Queen’s English – ‘Another round of four’ – correcting for etiquette and for the task set to him in the approaching afternoon.

 Excepting Ferguson, he had met all of the lads in a like-context nearly thirteen years prior, having had a laugh at a dialogue he had the pleasurable misfortune of having overheard, prompting question all too common (“ _Are you English?_ ”) to be quickly followed by those more warranting of comment and consideration (“ _Settle a debate for us then? Francis here made the acquaintance of this lovely lady in St Pauli,_ ” Simcoe had said of a partially inflated sex doll he had produced by unzipping one of the rucksacks, “ _Ban insists on calling her Ursula, I think that is disrespectful.” – “But you agree that is what she looks like, right? Von der Leyen the Federal Minister of far too many things,”_ Tarleton had summarised. Hanger squinted at the blow up doll – the only politician who may have needed a bit more empty hot air, then sat, curious to share a pint with his countrymen whose gap-year happened to coincide with the World Cup. He ordinarily avoided such exchanges while at university – eager to improve his own German, not wanting to waste time translating a single exchange on constant repeat. Looking back, he grew a little annoyed that in all the time that had elapsed since none of his friends had learned how to arrange for their own alcohol abroad. Equally, it bothered him that Simcoe had never answered the question he had countered with immediately following his first “ _[…] vier Biere, bitte_.” within this partial collective.)

After collecting the empty cups to exchange as partial collateral for new ones, he inquired the man once more to a truly confused expression. Simcoe’s spine straightened and he jolted his head back which had the effect of momentarily merging the lines of definition between his thick neck and heavy chin, as though words so arranged upset the very matter that made him.

“That is extremely specific,” Ferguson commented. “Tad sexist.”

And Ferguson, Hanger thought to himself, was a _tad_ hypocritical in this assessment as previously had proved his norm. The night prior, the same man had bragged in a hotel bar that at a recent salon he had attended (the sort that very likely stank of Scottish nationalism however otherwise framed, for people with savings accounts usually found misleading synonyms for their political agenda) had also brought together two of the women Tinder had brought into his bed over the course of whatever measure he chose to define ‘recent’. Never a defeatist, when Ferguson saw that they were getting on as reasonably as any two women might when argument was on the agenda, he approached the pair and, using language in a fashion that suggested to each that she was his one and only, that he was seeing the other for the first time and maybe they would all like to see a bit more of one another got them to agree to a threesome, the kind that did not end awkwardly in a breakfast without eye-contact thanks to its happening almost instantly in the hostess’ bed whilst she sat in the drawing room unaware, likely laughing at her own jokes. In explaining this, Ferguson’s speech had veered towards obscenities, even none-penetrative acts of passion rendered into filth by the reality that the Scottish accent could only accommodate two flat vowel sounds. Whatever his views on hashtag-activism as popularised by actresses now too old to let their looks substitute talent, he spoke of sex as ‘ _sex_ ’ rather than ‘ _love making_ ’ as Simcoe did, or Rawdon’s ‘ _trivial affairs_ ’, or Tarleton’s ‘ _I don’t really think Spurs stand a chance at beating Liverpool in the final, it is nice for them to get there but playing with reduced options I don’t even see them getting a win at Goodison Park tomorrow_ ’, which Hanger took to mean that he had not himself ‘scored’ since last they spoke.

Yet Hanger had been dubbed the ‘sexist’ among them for a statement in which such was not demonstratively true.

“There is a context,” he gave, “when I first met these blokes -after the obligatory ‘do you speak English’ exchange – the first thing they asked me was if I thought a sex doll looked like the damalige Bundesministerin für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend – yes, that is comprehensive as it sounds,” he said of the title, “no, that is not all one word – I inquired if they often thought about politicians while thus engaged which resulted in a round of kill-fuck-marry on the same criteria. John never came up with a response.”

“That you remember that all these years hence,” Simcoe scoffed.

“I don’t even remember who was sitting in Parliament to that time,” Rawdon shrugged, slighting, “I doubt John even knew then.”

“Today is easy. I mean … we all know who we would kill,” Tarleton alluded, lowering his voice as though he was privy to some secret plan, before giving a bright smile and expanding further on the question with full confidence in his response to it, “and then fuck Stacey Abrams and marry Imelda Marcos. Only way to go.”

“That really needs some clarification,” Rawdon told him.

“Theresa May you dolt.” 

Rawdon shut his eyes and rubbed at his temples in mild frustration – either with Tarleton directly, with the hour or how the daylight – however limited – was worsening the headache he too must have had. “Um, Stacey -” he began.

“Abrams published eight bestselling romance novels which must speak to something,” Tarleton said brightly, “and Marcos has a net worth of something like five billion and she is about to turn ninety.”

“And some accuse you of lacking strategy and vision,” Ferguson smiled.

“My vision, Sir, involves us getting ourselves to the next cart,” Tarleton said, “Oi! Quit nursing that thing. C’mon – get it down you then.”

“It is not as though the other beer trucks are going anywhere,” the Scot stated. “Pace yourself.”

“But here – here in the shade it is cold,” Tarleton frowned.

“It is the same temperature over there. Sunlight in Germany is a kind of mirage,” Hanger advised. “Any road, I told you about the Eisheilige – you were the one who decided on that get up.”

“You said you would wear the sandals,” Tarleton complained. “I wanted us to match.” He was in fact donning sandals in ‘the German style’ in ten-degree, mostly cloudy weather, the socks which stopped at his ankles doing little to protect his mostly bare legs, thick from years of horse-sport, from trembling. Though Hanger had never himself worn Lederhosen, he had heard the trousers described as warm – but then this description came from men who paired these shorts with knee’s highs in the mountains, or in beer-halls with bad music, respectively. Tarleton’s situation was not helped by the fact that he had opted out of a traditional shirt in favour of the now-ill-fitted football jersey which he had bought the summer before Oxford, something which clashed with the motif for reasons that went beyond reminding Hanger of how many hours he comparatively had not spent on a weight bench in the years since the scouse’s form had since come to fill it out.

Where a true ‘Fohlen’ might have found offence in the leather shorts, the enormous goat-hair plume that defined Tarleton’s Amazon-purchased Gamsbart might serve to offset some of the confusion and criticism, perhaps reminding the Gladbach faithful of the time they themselves had slain a goat in an act aggression born form a more localised rivalry with 1.FC Köln. Tarleton, ignorant of how geographic culture truly was (despite campaigning on a platform that profited from as much back home), simply looked ridiculous. As one might have expected.

“Did you think I’d be in Trachtenmode?” Hanger laughed at him in response. “That we were in the Alps? That Bavaria was a ‘synonym’ rather than a ‘state’? It would be like … if a tourist went to the Midlands and in an attempt to ‘blend in’ got off the plane in a kilt -”

“It still doesn’t explain your uniform from antiquity,” Tarleton countered. The argument, Hanger begrudgingly admitted to himself, was valid. Digging it out of the back of his wardrobe, he had spent a fair few moments admiring his reflection, adding a sash around his waist for a bit of fit and a bit of flair, tying the hair he had let grow out in his Caribbean sick-bed back with a ribbon at the base of his neck, fully feeling the part of a gentleman officer. Even Marcon had seemed to agree with this unspoken assessment, screeching “Oui!Oui!Oui!” in the manner all monkeys were wont to do when he presented the fruit-cup he had bought his new flat-mate while waiting for his friends at the train-station last night after seeing teenaged girls who otherwise looked as though they did not eat at all select the same and name it “Gesund.” Marcon reached his hand inside the plastic cup after its lid had been removed and offered George a piece of cut pineapple before picking through the rest. He had left feeling a bit guilty about leaving the small thing home alone all day but worried that the imitative sounds of battle would only frighten it.

This, he now felt, had been a mistake. He could have done well with the fanfare for the French had always been more fashion-conscious than the British.

“It is for the shooting contest,” Hanger explained, wondering that this detail had been lost on someone so unashamedly superficial as Tarleton. Surely, he had made note of the other men within view in similar (but less spectacular) costume. He was very likely seething inside that he had not thought in advance to obtain permission to don his dress-uniform, a relic from when Britain had ruled the world and more fitted to any era or event than what he was instead in.

“Like with for the black powder? Is it flame retardant?” Rawdon asked, leaning over to feel the fabric as though his soft fingers were capable of gauging the garment’s practical worth. Then again, the Lord’s upbringing likely saw him indulge in weekly acts of clay-pigeon genocide, likely in the same khaki coloured trousers and bright-but-bland casual sweater over a buttoned shirt get-up that added to the high-born impression of his receding hairline and a slight downward gaze that spoke both to boredom and bemusement. Hanger pulled his sleeve free of his friend’s pinch.

“No, its … it is what the local militia wore to the time our club started,” he explained. “It is uniform like you would wear in any sport.”

Everyone turned their eyes to Ferguson, who despite sling, cast and crutch looked as though he had a mind to return to the field at any moment if afforded the opportunity. Perhaps owing to injury, perhaps to profession, he wore a red adidas track-suit, the kind that likely cost more than most of the three-piece variety and was likewise paired with smart shoes of Italian leather. He sipped at his beer consciously and deliberately as though expecting another request that he finish quickly.

“Do you maybe want something stronger?” Hanger asked, reaching into his back pocket as he watched his friend trying not to frown.

“Like a shot?” Ferguson asked. “Nae, I was considering consenting to Ban’s request to get on with the march so long as we happen past a café. I could do with a coffee. I’ve a good decade on you lot and last night did me in.”

“I meant by way of pain killers,” Hanger said, producing a half-emptied plastic push-out.

Ferguson forced a laugh as he shook his head. “Ah – thanks to profession and personal inclinations nothing you have in your medical cabinet would make much of a difference. I’ve handled five surgeries on my elbow in the past two months without aesthetic and I’m due for another on the third. A headache I can deal with, alcohol, at this hour, unfortunately I cannot. Shall we?” he asked, putting his drink down unfinished.

“I thought you broke your arm playing rugby last week,” Hanger stated.

Ferguson blinked. “I did, why you ask?”

“In a cast?” Simcoe’s unblinking eyes widened. They still looked beady in his bloated face, the largely sedentary life he now led suiting him perhaps a bit too well. A man of massive stature, he had grown considerably wider since last they had seen each other and his dark cashmere pullover grew taunt over the stomach that spoke to spousal love. All the same, it fit him – as did the high fur lined hat he wore in mockery of Tarleton, same as the gingerbread heart he wore as a necklace after taking exactly one bite from it to signal his tourist-status.

“Partial one, of course it has been expanded since,” Ferguson explained with an ease around the subject that spoke to a deep familiarity. “You ought to see the lads from the other pub-outfit, you have no idea how these things can bruise.”

“How the fuck do you have health insurance?” Simcoe seemed to accuse.

“NHS, ‘innit? Putting my taxes to work.”

“Can I sign it?” Tarleton asked hopefully.

“If you can self-censor,” Ferguson replied.

“Best not,” the smaller man agreed. “What is with the crutch though? You weren’t using it last night.”

“Old injury, sliding tackle that resulted in my taking a red. I hit the other player from the back, the angle and force with which he then fell caused his cleat it cut right through the ligaments in my knee – five match ban, thirty five quid fine and early but acute arthritis. Still, ‘tis no exaggeration when I say I bloody love Sundays.”

“Patrick, I’m sorry,” Rawdon shook his head, “do you have any sports narratives that don’t end in aggravated assault and mandatory sentencing?”

“Plenty but those don’t make for good drinking stories and you lot seem to want to carry on with it.”

“Fair,” Simcoe consented.

“As more a matter of honoured principle, I’d be happy to find a coffee, too,” Hanger said. “I have to shoot an inexact gun in the next two hours slightly better than some chap who mugged me off at the supermarket. Caffeine could be decisive.”

Tarleton sighed and Simcoe seemed earnest in his muter echo of this sentiment.

“You all are under no obligation to join,” Ferguson was quick to say to them. “We’ll catch up.”

 

 “Is everything alright?” Hanger asked after a few metres of sweet sorrow. “You seemed eager to absent yourself from our shared company as soon as I afforded you opportunity to not appear asocial in -”

Ferguson shook his head. “I’m fine. I’ve a right bitching headache, to be sure – but the lads are better served by carrying on. Look … don’t say anything, but Francis got word last night that tomorrow’s Observer plans to outline just how much of his personal fortune he’s lent to the monarchy in the last months and the last of what any of us can afford in the current crisis is a weakening of the House of Windsor, especially with growing Scottish animosity at the English soldiers garrisoning the boarder confusing Hewlettism with full autonomy for the locals. It is a mess and this won’t make matters any better. On top of everything else at stake, Francis is unlikely to enjoy his party’s nomination for Prime Minister now that whispers of corruption - however unwarranted - are sure to turn to cries.”

“Shit,” Hanger muttered, momentarily lost for what more could be said. He glanced behind him but his friends had already disappeared from view. “Does Ban know yet?” he asked cautiously as this seemed like something that could easily erupt between the two men at the slightest of ruptures with alcohol only adding to the severity of the explosion. Simcoe, who would not immediately recognise that he had every bit as much to lose with the large union being as unstable as it was would likely try to stand in the way of shouts before they could turn to shoves and so manage to make the existing problems worse. Hanger wondered if he would fare any better in the same position, if he had been selfish to bemoan his recent fate when the problems his friends had been facing absent him had such higher stakes than those he personally knew.

“About the loans or the uncovering of them?” Ferguson questioned before dismissing the same notion, “Regardless, if he does, he isn’t letting on. He’s got problems enough away from Westminster and Buckingham Palace that are likely weighing more on his mind.”

“What do you mean? Not getting that command -”

Ferguson shook his head again. “He’d have been in no state to take it and regardless of how convincing his showmanship is, I think he is self-aware enough to recognise as much. Mary’s recent death has forced him and his wife to finally contend with the reality that their marriage is primarily rooted in their shared fortune-seeking tendencies, in political connections that each other’s famous surnames allow for,” he frowned, having regard for both parties. “There would be space to fix it, I’m sure, but for the fact that Marie’s spent more than a few weekends as of late at Villa Park – probably seeking out her biological father now that her mother is gone. Ban’s understandably devastated, that little girl means the whole world to him. At the same time, he knows he is pushing her away by continuing to do what she is still too young to see is in her best interest – they have had more than a few fights over Fridays for Future v. _her_ future being Oxbridge and holding herself in the top percentile of her class – i.e. not missing exams for a movement that is having a moment - rather than relying on his current office to ensure admission, for otherwise he fears that they two are enough alike that she’d arrive at Cambridge or Oxford with a shaky confidence and sabotage her own success to prove a point.”

“He’s my best friend … I thought I was his. He didn’t say anything,” he stopped, corrected, “I mean, he always goes on about his girls but I didn’t realise at all his home life was quite so hard -”

“I wouldn’t think too much on it,” Ferguson said lightly. “He told me all this last time he was up to visit Banina – who has taken to referring to me in familiar and familial terms because the kids at school have nothing nice to say about her actual father. I’ve been picking her up,” he explained, “her mum’s office is on the other side of the city. There is no animosity between us, it is only -”

“It is hard.”

“I think him lonely. But life just works out that way some times. You can do everything right and still lose the esteem of others … He’ll figure out a way through it. He’s strong and a lot smarter than that which he plays to,” Ferguson said before trying to joke, “I suppose he would almost have to be.”

“He never said anything to me … not directly, if he had I’d, I mean I’m sure it would be easier for me than for Ban or any of you to arrange a sit-down with John Terry at least, see what is really going on -”

Ferguson frowned.

“What?” Hanger demanded.

“Don’t bring it up. Ban, Francis, any of it, just … keep on with being -”

“What?”

“Self-centric. Opinionated. Distractingly so.”

“Excuse me -”

“I mean it to be kind. You are so object to the kinds of conflicts that define an ordinary adult existence that no one discusses such matters with you which here is for the best, it gives them a break from thinking about it. John’s investment in the American market isn’t paying off as quickly as his figures in Europe are falling – thanks to Trump not understanding how sanctions work and the whole of Westminster to busy jockeying for post-Brexit placement to work out feasible economic models of taxation to offset our own higher import- and export costs. All this is to say that his missus is the bread-winner in their household and he is worried that his resentment of this fact -however undirected- is having a negative effect on how his young daughters are beginning to internalize the ideas they encounter of women in the workforce, wages discrepancies ordinarily being even more extreme on the other side of the Atlantic than they are on our shores. Of course, his fairy-godmother won’t let up about what she sees as him sulking over a few zeros, inviting the whole Graves family into what might otherwise be a simple existential crisis - ideas of insufficiency confined to his own mind.”

“Alcohol won’t help with that one at all,” Hanger surmised, wondering if he should have know all of this, wondering if he still knew anyone at all, if understanding could come from empathy rather than shared experience, if is own existence was a luxury rather than a choice while questioning how very few difficult decisions he had been comparatively asked to come to.

“Talking to other men in general might.”

“But not me?”

“I didn’t expect you to care. I shouldn’t have said anything beyond ‘they need a beer; we need a coffee.’ Have you seen a café?”

He had not been looking. They walked in silence for a few blocks. George felts his eyes shift over the tents and stands without truly seeing any of it. Francis’ political life would soon be in ruins, Ban’s personal life already was, and John faced the same problems on both fronts without having done anything to actively invite them upon himself. All the same, he felt particularly cross with them for this shared, sustained evasion of matters weighing heavily on their mind, and cross with himself that he was affording any of this much thought at all. For a while, he had had an app on his phone that spat-out the pseudo-feminist rhetoric of Vogue UK’s current editor – John’s ‘fairy godmother’ as Patrick had sarcastically put it. Presumably at being asked why she married his godfather later in life, a life otherwise spent shunning the institution, she had answered, _‘Do you know why men and women get divorced? It isn’t fights, finances, infidelity – we’re otherwise socially conditioned to contend with the extremes of for better or for worse. It is the rest of it. It’s women waking up in the morning with a to-do list and men, who had assumed that their wives would suddenly be on the same wavelength, growing frustrated that they are being asked to think and act before they have had breakfast as though they honestly entered into a union hoping that this person to whom they promised ‘for ever and always’ to would essentially be a man everywhere but between the legs. Sam and I have separate bedrooms. He’s retired now and when he wakes up, I’ve already been at the office for two hours and out of the house for four. I think the key to any relationship is being strategic in how much of your life you can comfortably share.’_

In terms of marriage or any romantic attachment, Hanger had been fast to agree and upon reflection thought that this logic could be subscribed to any long-term relationship. He had been friends with most of these men for more than a decade and questioned if this was partially thanks to the scattered nature of it.

Ferguson seemed this think so – but if this was a judgement on friendship in itself or Hanger personally, he was not quite decided. Certainly, they all seemed to trust him with their happenings, that, or proximity to the fields of conflict matched with his former career as a police detective simply made him more attune.

“Do you want to just grab something there?” Ferguson asked, pointing to a stand that sold hot beverages. “I need to sit down for a moment if it is all the same.” After limping to a table, taking a seat at the end of one of the long benches that had been erected with it, he handed Hanger a tenner, asked for milk and sugar and pulled out his smart phone, presumably to look at a series of numbers over which he had no control (weather statistics, stocks) and those to which he was victim (followers, retweets.)

Whenever he found himself growing angry about Patrick’s penchant for hypocrisy so blatant that he seemed himself immune, George remembered that they two had actually met over Twitter where his friend’s following was in the millions. Years before he would come to learn Egg-Shell’s true identity, that it intersected with his own by way of shared personal contacts, the two had been DMing over Six Nations Rugby, which time had told was the only subject over which Ferguson was ever honest enough to be self-actual, though his wit was never absent. He otherwise held himself to a standard of which he fell short more often than not and more often than most but was quick to pass judgement on those whose bar was set lower. Given their original context, Hanger did not know why he often let such get to him.

“Here,” he said returning to the table, coffee in hand and tens of tiny packages of heavy cream and sugar shove into a pocket that saw them son dusted with gun powder residue. “Scrum?” he asked of Ferguson’s shattered ligaments.

"That was actually in a football match sliding for a tackle. Here in Germany, actually. Laid me out for six months which roundabout coincides with the match ban I received for the offence. Still shaky on the grounds there,” he shrugged. “Granted my only experience with the game was in Glasgow prior to Rangers getting relegated -"

"They are back up and have something like ten reds in all comps. It is what you remember, Gerrard is so frustrated with the side I'd be surprised if he's there come preseason."

"And Celtic?"

"Unprecedented run of league titles."

"Well then, I suppose that about sums up the extent of my investment in the game. Tell me again in a decade or so if history has had time to decide if Messi or Ronaldo was better."

"As judged in terms of titles or bookings?" Hanger snorted.

"Bookings?” Ferguson raised his hand to his chest in imitative indignation. “Have I said anything to imply that I am not in support of fair play? Had I known the rules, I'd have contented myself to _frolic_ back and forth down the pitch like everyone else."

"When next you are at a pub that happens to have a match on, please live blog it for my personal amusement," Hanger laughed.

"I'd lose half my audience,” Ferguson answered. “Not in numbers. I'm myself lost to the terminology and they would think me to be vague posting about something of genuine significance. It would be like back when Ban put up anything beyond the death threats that he receives by post with his first name misspelled, when I genuinely had to squint as I read and ask myself if he was offering a critique on real-world military matters or if these were Game of Thrones spoilers."

"You can phrase it in those terms only to deny me."

"Tell me, where does your sense of entitlement come from?" Ferguson taunted.

"An actual title. And your constant but seemingly unconscious hypocrisy?" Hanger countered.

"Twitter."

"As I always assumed," he laughed. “Brilliant!” Stirring cream into his coffee and feeling this would not be enough, Hanger looked for and spotted the closest thing he might here find to the tried and true hangover cure that was an English breakfast, excused himself to run across the way, returning to his friend a few minutes later with two of the greasiness sausages the stand had in its assortment.

"Ah - Bratwürste!" Ferguson gleefully exclaimed. They were Krakauer. Hanger did not bother himself with a direct correction. "So, you were in Germany long enough to get a multi match ban in a Sunday league but you barely speak a word of the language?" he asked instead.

“I spent six months here for work. A course in forensics. It was taught in English,” Ferguson shrugged.

“Typical of vocational collages these days,” Hanger said, not wanting to state that half of his classes at Göttingen had been in his mother tongue as well.

“Are we doing the thing where the whole of our interaction is laying into your idea that you are linguistically superior to all of to whom you speak because you so happen to have studied abroad? Okay, jetzt ohne scheiß - ich kann doch reden, allerdings nicht mit Fachworten so wie die was du einwendest.“

All of his vowels continued to sound like flat ‘a’s which made the attempt wonderfully melodic if woefully difficult to understand. Hanger felt his face light up.

“Die Leute können mich aber verstehen, wenn ich etwas Richtiges zu sagen habe,“ he demonstrated, „‚Noch eine Runde?‘ ‚Darf man hier rauchen?‘ ‚Wo ist die Toilette?‘“

The Germans sitting to their right abruptly stopped their conversation to contribute the kindly-meant but fully demoralising "Du sprichst aber gut Deutsch!" to which Ferguson offered an awkward and entirely too British "Dankeschön" which he pronounced as "Dahkahshoon", thus forcing Hanger to press his lips together, containing the expletives tingling the tip of his tongue along with his laughter.

“Where _is_ there a toilet?” he then wondered. “We should have popped into a café after all.”

Ferguson look around. “Just use a bush.”

“Do you know the term “Wildpinkeln”?” Hanger smiled, “It is a legal terminus.”

“I’ve never heard it.”

“Literally: wild pissing. The fine for such lays between thirty-five and five-thousand euros, and you can get up to a year in prison.”

“For going in a bush?” Ferguson tried to clarify his disbelief; his mouth as wide as his eyes as he asked.

“It is good that you know how to ask for a toilet,” Hanger laughed. “And those all cost fifty cents.”

“That gives context to so many philosophies I’ve never fully understood that so happen to stem from the same culture that would go on to produce such legislation.”

“Isn’t it just.”

 

* * *

 

"Fuck it," Hanger declared after a twenty-minute search, electing to take cover in the arsenal of cloth containing his club's replica flintlocks.

Ferguson followed him into this make-shift WC, too fascinated by what he found inside to pay the other most human need any mind. With his single arm, he took a flintlock from its casing with the same youthful wonder that one often met physical objects they knew of only from books – likely trying to match ideas gleaned from diagrams and descriptions with realities so common to everything they became difficult to convey on paper, such as the weapons weight, and its size comparative to whatever private measure against which he was given to organizing objects.

Hanger smiled.

It was no use to tell Ferguson that he needed a licence to lift the thing, especially as he was in the process of enthusiastically explaining the weapon from a mechanical understanding.

"How did this become a hobby for you anyway?” he asked. “Policing?"

"Nae, I've been in union rugby since I was eight, I spent a lot of time waiting in doctors'  surgeries over the years and being that this predated smartphones, my entertainment options were restricted to the magazine selection, military history proving more interesting to a teenager than modern politics or whatever it is girls read - catalogues that just showed various products placed together to imitate a celebrity outfit -"

"Sounds right," he paused. "Do you want to shoot it?" No one was in the immediate vanity and with the marching band practicing for a short procession, Hanger could reasonably assume no one would hear if they two decided to waste six rounds on whatever could be found in the closest rubbish bin.

"I have before,” Ferguson answered almost wistfully, “a mate who works at the National Museum let me and a number of my fellow officers fire off a few rounds on replicas in a field before an exhibition opened few years back – a local hero whose name I happen to share along with tens of others having invented his own version in days of yore. I wasn’t even the only Patrick Ferguson on the police force to that time, though likely the only one who knew that odd titbit of history prior to the event. Alas, in the end it seems I shared the unfortunate major’s fate - my nerves were damaged during my first operation and I don't have enough movement in my fingers to even press a trigger – I could offer you a few pointers though if your keen."

"Scheiße … what happened to you there anyway?"

"Oh - this?” Ferguson indicated to his sling, “There is no backstory."

"No backstory or none that lead to a booking?" Hanger tried to joke.

"It is not sport related," Ferguson replied in flat tones that felt warning. Hanger let the direct line of questioning drop, but owning partially to his curiosity and partially to Ferguson's earlier criticism around his lack of care, he inquired further, "So … beyond having a threesome in Miss Burges' bed, having your mate's kid mistake or misname you as her father, having acquired presumably preventable field injury as well as one that defies explanation beyond it not sitting you in the sin bin, nerding out over eighteenth century weaponry and secretly processing a foreign language, you been up to much, mate?"

"Not … yes but no,” Ferguson put the rifle down, not removing his eyes from it as he clearly debated expanding. “It is nothing to concern you with," he said finally.

Hanger bit his lip. "Are you ill?"

"Maybe,” Ferguson laughed. “I am thinking of asking a girl to marry me."

"The fuck -"

"See? This is why no one tells you shit."

"That isn't how I meant it, I just thought -” he stopped, not quite certain what it was he was meant to think. “I mean you were bragging last night about an unexpected hook up and I know you are seeing a few people semi-regularly, but I assumed that there was nothing end game in the works and I doubt I’m alone in that -"

"It's been winded down to one for a few months now but it is a little messy, Sal's the DI they brought down from Inverness upon my resignation. Referencing an old case with which I daresay you and I are both familiar, she came across a discrepancy in the report and called me up for clarification. As you might expect, I never rang her back. Any road, a few weeks had passed and I’d all but forgotten about it. By accident or design, she found me scrolling on Tinder, we set something up and after about fifteen minutes of flirting she showed me her badge and came at me with the same questions I wouldn't answer over the phone. We took the conversation back to mine if you will and I started seeing her regularly after that - mostly in hopes of compelling her whilst keeping my silence not to reopen the case, but it has become … I like myself better when I am around her, she is the commutation of every quality worth inspiring to, on top of which she's a red-head with a quick wit and cruel tongue which you know I love. I really didn't think I would ever fall in love again - it's," he stopped, pivoted. "Sorry, I know none of this holds -"

"No. Hey, I care about what is going on in your life, man. I'm sorry that doesn't come over, that you and everyone only think me good for a weekend's amusement -" Hanger stopped, suddenly feeling bad over all of the women he had described in the same terms over the course of his life. "I didn't mean, look, I do know what it is like to be in love. It is … consuming and confusing. You are lost to your own senses but so confident in ideals you did not even know yourself to process that the limits of language are suddenly apparent; you understand that the reason there are so many love songs owes itself to the fact that even the most gifted of our poets can't definitively describe the sensation, but as it is so overwhelming even failure brings some measure of relief, if only in that you allow yourself more time to reflect on all the perfection you have found.” His description veered towards exaggerated and Ferguson’s expression told him this over-correction was not convincing. “Don't look at me that way,” Hanger shrugged. “I was in love once. I was married even - technically I still am."

Ferguson’s face went white. "Christ, I honestly had no idea. George, I sincerely apologise, I never meant -" he rambled, stumbling under the weight of a heavy heart he seemed to carry on his tongue. Hanger allowed himself a moment of pure satisfaction form this shift in tone for he had never previously witnessed Patrick Ferguson consider that he might himself embody the faults of society which he was so quick to call out in the words and actions of others.

"No, no,” he stopped him, struck suddenly by a sharp pain when he considered the possible implication of his statement, clarifying quickly, “it is not that she died, no. My tragedy is of another nature, shortly after we were wed by gypsy rites, she left me for a bow-legged tinker,” he said, thinking it sounded poetic. Then, love often took the shape of lyric and verse.

By ‘gypsy rites’, George naturally meant that the German bureaucracy forced a Danish union upon his wife and himself, for he was a British subject, she had been born in Romania, and after thousands of Euros spent on the translation and certification of documents only to be turned away time and again by city hall with a longer list of additional paperwork needed to prove identity in this instance, he had been told by one of his professors (a German with a Polish wife) that he would be better served spending three nights in Tonder just across the border. The European ‘Union’ did not make marital ones any easier, or so Herr Dr Dr Prof von Knyphausen (who, despite his insistence on being spoken to with every possible honorific had since gone on to represent the worker’s party SPD in the same body he then criticised) told. He himself could not marry in his hometown because Polish birth-certificates were issued by the church rather than the city, a subject he brought to the attention of the chancellor after she had stated that multiculturalism had failed by countering that the German state had instead failed multiculturalism, even going so far as to drag “die von Hänger” into his argument of gross bureaucratic incompetence, which, though itself convincing, had the effect of turning George off to late-night political talk shows altogether. Woe that he had ever wed! By such time, “the Hangers” were as much of a myth as “German Efficiency” and perhaps the whole citizenry was better served by the red tape that he had since come to assume stood in place to protect the hearts of young romantics.

“Gypsy rites?” Ferguson squinted.

“She’s a ‘Zigeunerin’,” Hanger explained.

More specifically, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen or seen since.

His eyes had accidented upon her on the bus and entranced, he had gotten off two stops before his own to follow her as she went about the next half hour of a day that to her must have seemed mundane, buying coffee and a croissant at a nearby bakery, flipping through the same book he had seen her reading on the train as she ate, searching her large purse for a lighter thereafter – oh, he had observed in anticipation of the phantasy that might follow, she was even gorgeous when she wore a slight frown! Upon her finding it, a man on the street asked her in a language they shared for a cigarette which she then gave. She took a few steps in the direction she was headed, pivoted and went back inside the bakery as George had been exiting. She purchased a sandwich, a water and another coffee which she brought to the beggar with a second fag. George hurried to put some spare change in a cup that had come from the same establishment out of a want to seem generous to this beautiful angle of mercy to gracious thanks from the beggar’s full mouth.

“ _You shouldn’t do that_ ,” the woman whispered him as she turned to walk away.  George moved to follow. “ _By all means offer alms to the poor_ ,” the woman continued briskly as was her pace, _“but not in the form of cash. That money won’t feed him, it will only go to furthering the practice of slavery. Do you know what they do in Romania – they go into towns and kidnap en masse, taking pretty young girls to places like Amsterdam and Odessa, the old and invalid to rich cities in central Europe and tell them that if they don’t stay right where they have been stationed their families will be killed to the last man.”_

It was a strange way to say hello.

“ _Are you a social worker?_ ” Hanger asked.

“ _A student,_ ” she answered. “ _and a gypsy, I suppose, in the loosest sense of the word. My parents are from Piatra Neamț - Kreuzburg an der Bistritz as you might know it._ ”

‘Gypsy’, Hanger pondered the word, or rather the one she had used in their common language – ‘Zigeunerin’, bothered by the implication he took from hearing it spoken. It was one of those terms he had not seen in circulation since the Second World War and he suddenly felt very ‘integrated’ in the self-righteousness of his apology.

“ _You shouldn’t refer to yourself in such terms,_ ” he told her, “ _and, despite the ignorance that allowed me to mistake change for charity, you must know that I never would. Say that. It is racist,_ ” he acknowledged, “ _and it pains me to think of you having heard such language in your past_.”

“ _How is that racist?_ ” she challenged, stopping in her tracks to look him dead in the eye.

“ _I’m sure there is a term you’d prefer. Might I inquire which_ -”

“ _Outside of this specific context I have no idea how such would ever come up in conversation. Let’s pretend that you’ve been following me around for half the morning trying to get up the never to ask me out. Say we do end up dating. Say things are going well. You wouldn’t introduce me to your mates as ‘she’s a gypsy.’ No, you are way too ‘white’ to ever trust yourself to openly acknowledge colour or culture on an individual basis. You would say, simply ‘this is Ioana’ and your friends would say ‘Johanna’ and you would offer the correction I wouldn’t, and maybe then you would inform them of my gypsy heritage to make yourself seem less awkward._

“ _You couldn’t simply say ‘Romanian’,”_ she considered, _“that would be incorrect. I have a German passport and someone who stops a girl on the street to inquire about politically correct nomenclature prides himself on his command of language and in a further show of gross vanity likes to pretend this comes from a ‘liberal’, ‘open-minded’ outlook when, in fact, you are just a snob. But you like to be exact when not exacting. Might I in turn ask, your accent – are you American?_ ”

“ _I’m English_ ,” Hanger had answered. No one had even thought him a snob before to the full extent of his knowledge.

“ _Du sprichts aber gut Deutsch_ ,“ she smiled meanly.

“ _Whatever I have done to offend you, madame_ -”

“ _It’s I who should be asking forgiveness_ ,” she answered, too quickly for the statement to have been truly genuine. “ _I’m ecstatic to have found a relevance for that awful and all-too-often phrase. But let’s stick with the field of linguistics:_ _Sinti and/or Roma didn't lend themselves to gendered declinations and as such, whatever the day's politics, ‘Zigeunerin’ will always be thus the correct way to refer to a woman of that cultural heritage. At least grammatically._ ”

“I kissed her right then and there,” he told Ferguson. “We spent the next two years dating and deeply in love until the semester before her thesis, a year before my own, I asked her to marry me, afraid of losing her when she moved from Göttingen to Hannover for a job she had been promised. I had gone up unannounced to visit her at the hospital where she quite fittingly for the course of this narrative was by then employed as a cartologist, only saw her in the arms of another – a traveling pharmaceutical representative to judge by his briefcase. I left - broken hearted by the heart-doctor – and like most young romantics, turned to drink and general debauchery. My grades slipped and I found myself seeking a substitution for lost love in the only way that has ever made sense to me since: sex workers, women who sell a certain phantasy, having known love enough to know that all I could hope from it was illusion; not wanting to again engage in the kinds of conversation that would lead me to take fiction for fact.

“I’d woken up in a brothel the morning I was meant to defend my thesis and found myself in a bar thereafter, certain I had failed my oral exam, my parents, myself when I had the luck of overhearing my mother tongue used for such vulgarities I felt myself home in a metaphoric sense that rarely equates to experience. And then I spent the summer on the run with our shared friends … mostly trying to return a goat we’d accidently kidnapped, no pun intended, to a football team. I actually finished with a 1,4 – uni, I mean, and could have probably found work in my field of study, but alas, it worked out that I’d made leeway with the press over the course of that same summer who apricated the spin I brought to sports coverage and found myself working at Bild shortly before they lost the right to call themselves a newspaper, before I even knew that I’d finished my degree near the top of my class,” he told, adding, “nothing to do with the advent of my employment, the distinction ‘Zeitung’ being dropped from that name. That actually owes itself to a partnership with McDonald’s but that’s not … any road. I was married. I am married still, never having sought a formal divorce after seeing how much I was saving on earned-income tax.”

“I don’t know what I was expecting,” Ferguson said finally. “I would say that is pretty close though. I could still help you win this thing – show you how to load and shoot and who knows, with what you save in local taxes you could file for that divorce.”

“I’m content to never walk into city hall again if it can be helped,” Hanger sighed. “I don’t pay local taxes anyway as I list my primary residence in Driffield where I also don’t pay shit seeing the property isn’t in my name. But thank you.”

“You want to shoot off a few rounds anyway?” Ferguson tried. He clearly did.

“I usually do when I’ve been reminiscing about marriage,” Hanger laughed, if only for the fact that he was happy to see his friend smile again, and happy in a broader sense that Ferguson seemed to have found that which Hanger himself would not seek.

“If it helps, I have only ever heard that word you used in describing a schnitzel with mushrooms,” the Scot said with a half shrug as he began to pocket balls and black powder.

“That is a ‘jäger schnitzel’. A ‘zeuguiner schnitzel’ is with onions. That was actually the debate du jour, at the time ‘the wife’ and I met, if we shouldn’t as a language area change the name on all of the menus.”

“When you were at university,” Ferguson began to calculate, “Wouldn’t it have been the rise in unemployment, the declining value of higher education met with an increase in costs, a lack of investment in infrastructure and health services -”

“No, the interest of politics is to direct anger at unsubstantial issues. Still is. Take that piece I wrote after my interview with Özil last summer asking if we shouldn’t instead crucify Berlin for allowing a dictator to campaign in Germany rather than making a show over a frankly stupid footballer for doing the same thing that all frankly stupid footballers _do_ in taking a selfie with someone more famous then him. It is almost fully irrelevant to the kinds of discussions people ought to have been having. Alas, FourFourTwo rejected it outright and I couldn’t find any outside buyer-interest.”

“Maybe that is why I never read it.”

“You never read it because everything I send you goes directly to your spam folder.”

“Sounds right. Anyone up in arms that jäger-sauce isn’t made with Jägermeister then?” Ferguson smarted.

“No,” Hanger winced, “that is another misconception. Germans don’t actually drink the stuff. Have you had Jägermeister – since uni, I mean?”

“No.”

“Okay, that is what we are all doing tonight then,” Hanger declared as they stepped out onto the lawn where the competition would soon take place. “I’ll arrange a bottle to toast a point. Here, let me -”

“You need to open -” Ferguson began to instruct.

“Like that you mean?” Hanger bragged, admiring his own quick loading. Headache gone and wanting to get back to drinking, the rest of his friends and Petit Marcon, hoping to shoot first when everyone came in forty-five minutes for the competition, get close enough and then leave to enjoy the weekend absent this event he lifted the rifle and took aim at a stink-bug he spotted near the base of a tree from roughly fifteen meters, hitting his target seconds after announcing it.

“That is impressive,” Ferguson remarked in what seemed genuine admiration.

“Friend,” Hanger bragged, “I could shoot a flea.”

“What about a butterfly?” Ferguson challenged, nodding at one in the distance.

Its white wings made it an easy target against a background that disappeared entirely in his focus. Hanger reloaded, took aim, and when certain that he had the insect as stationary as he was likely to find it shot, already hearing Ferguson’s praise in the explosion following the flint’s brush with black powder lowered the weapon to wild cheering, more of it that he would have ever dared to dream.

George Hanger turned around and saw the heads of all of the shooting outfits applauding him. He looked over his shoulder to see that not only had he accidently hit the target; he had obliterated it.

He knew he would pay heavily for this, in beer if not blood.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **‘Integration’** :  
>  **Bild** is like the German Daily Mail, the thing about it no longer being able to call itself a newspaper is widely believed to be substantive rather than market-strategy. ‘Zeitung’ was officially dropped when the paper entered into a partnership with fast food chain McDonalds.
> 
>  **Danish weddings** are something of a standard among anyone with a migrant background, however distant. Nothing about the **bureaucracy** at play in this is a work of fiction, save for the idea that anyone in government would raise the issue.
> 
>  **“Wild pissing”** is also in the lawbooks. Really. And it is not one of those weird, archaic rules that most people are unaware of either. I found a sub-Reddit about how this particular piece of legislation unfairly targets men and I just …
> 
> When Ferguson demonstrates his limited German, he asks: **‘Should we have another round?’ ‘Is smoking allowed in this establishment?’ and’ Where is the toilette?’**
> 
>  **History:**  
>  The **conversation at the very end** where Hanger brags to Ferguson that he could shoot a flea was lifted from his memoir.
> 
> Hanger refers to his wife as having been a **“gypsy”** , which I can’t believe was even politically correct at the time. Despite Ioana’s argument on the grounds of grammar, I wouldn’t throw ‘Zigeuner/in’ around either. Unless you are ordering a schnitzel. “Bow-legged tinker” is the language he uses to describe the man she ran off with.
> 
> Ferguson injured his leg in Osnabrück during the **Seven Years’ War** , he remained prone to arthritis for the rest of his life.
> 
> A musket ball shattered his right-elbow joint at the **Battle of Brandywine** , crippling his arm and disabling him from shooting.
> 
>  **Sport** :  
>  **“Sin bin”** isn’t half as exciting as it sounds – in union rugby, it is where you sit out for ten minutes after a yellow card.
> 
> I said nice things about Gladbach in the previous chapter, now for a bit of balance: The Rhineland Derby is one of the fiercest in Germany. 1. FC Köln (yes, the “1” is part of their name) has the only living mascot in the Bundesliga, a goat titled Hennes. According to local legend, **Gladbach fans straight murdered the second holder of this office** (Hennes II), which is why the goat now lives in the zoo rather the stadium where his safety can be secure.
> 
> Kind of have the feeling that in this universe, Tarleton is rivaled only by Marco Silva in his over-estimation of FC Everton, but they really did get a **draw against Tottenham at home last weekend**. #spursitup
> 
>  **FourFourTwo** is a monthly football magazine, it is respected and respectable, but they print articles of the kind Hanger is (not) penning more often than not.
> 
>  **Politics** :  
>  **Stacey Abrams** was the democratic candidate for the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election. As a democrat, I’m sure she is either running a primary campaign for 2020 by now or soon will be. Her pen name is **Selena Montgomery** and her romance novels have sold more than 100,000 copies.
> 
> Former First Lady of the Philippines, **Imelda Marcos** together with her late husband Ferdinand hold the Guinness World Record for Greatest Robbery of a Government. She was arrested for corruption charges in November 2018 whilst serving as the governor of Manila. 
> 
> In 2006 under the government “Merkel II” **Ursula von der Leyen** was the Federal Minister of Families, Seniors, Women, and Youth. Under the current government “Merkel IV” she is the Federal Minister of Defense, and is under investigation by the military itself.
> 
> I am sure there is more – but I’ve had three beers in the course of the past two hours (a personal record!) that I’m really not built or socially conditioned for (Bayern is basically always league champion as the song up top suggests, but I’m pretty tiny even by Asian standards and come from a background that _strongly discourages_ such behavior.) Whatever. **Mia san Meister!!!**
> 
> XOXO – Tav
> 
> Up Next: Hanger’s friends rally together that he doesn’t go into debt. George has other ideas …


End file.
